Is a confirm email address field still considered a best practice?

Having an input field to confirm an email address is pretty standard. However, I would like to know if using a confirm email address field still considered a best practice.

The Email and Confirm email input controls account for a majority of the form abandonment for a client of mine. There are a variety of different reasons for it but i'm offering the following suggestions.

• Remove the confirm email address. My rationale is that no one actually double types so if they've copied an pasted from the email input control they'll both match but you can't guarantee either is right.
• Keep both boxes but provide immediate feedback to users with a javascript enabled browsers (ARIA - will be introduce in the next phase, so accessibility will fall back to server side validation) if the email addresses match/don't match.

Personally i'd like them to remove it. I think they are pointless and the form is very long as it is but i need evidence not just my opinion.